50 Years (2025 restored version) Directed by Vincent-louis Apruzzese

 Originally released in 2002 under the title "46 Years", "50 Years" is a recollection of memories and events as they relate to Ralph Hodgdon and Paul McMahon and their life-long love for each other. 

I revisited them 5 years after this was screened in Provincetown, Massachusetts and put for sale on Amazon as times had changed and the couple were able to get married on their 49th anniversary. It seemed right to do an additional interview after their 50th anniversary of the day they met and one year after they were able to get legally married. 

The restoration started in January 2025 when I discovered I had many, but not all the originals scans of the photos used in the film. My software also avowed me to take out the background music and improve the sound and more easily rework some edits. I still had the music done by David M. Puryear and was able to add it back in after the changes were made. 

Shot on Standard Definition video, before HD was a thing does limit how much improvement I could do on my own. I did clean up the titles between sections and updated the credits. I also had to take a break when Ralph got very ill and died in April 2025. Paul had passed in April 2011 and it was just too difficult work on. 

The 2020 version of the movie is for sale/rent on Amazon Streaming Prime Video.

Documentary: Tobias Allen - Why I Paint This way (2001 restoration)

  In 2001 I films a short documentary about (then) local Boston artist Tobias Blaine Allen.  It was edited in iMovie which was amazing at the time. I looked at it online recently and it looked TERRIBLE. 240p was fine on You Tube when it was uploaded and its unwatchable now. 

Today I found a better copy but still low resolution on my hard drive and upscaled it to HD. Then I brought it into Final Cut Pro and did some colour correction and audio fixes. Sadly, there are no copies of the images of the art in the film to replace those in the doc so I exported the worst of them as images and did my best to make them look nicer. They still don't look great, or ever did, they were shot with an early 1.5 megapixel Sony digital camera. 

The process took about 7 hours to complete the 1 minute film and now it's HD and looks and sounds much better. Hopefully Toby with think so! I will delete the older film so no one has to see how bad it looked on modern devices. 

Moonage Daydream (2022) directed by Brett Morgen

 

A lauded documentary about the life of rock start and artist David Bowie and authorized by his estate, this film has some amazing editing and fantastic sound restoration in it. The film mixes early Bowie with later Bowie clips and highlights several interviews he did over the years, gradually moving towards the last years of his life. It has been well received by his fans and won awards at several festivals. 

I do like Bowie, his work was strongly present in my youth and I followed his career right up until his death. I cannot say I like this movie very much overall, however. There is a lot of repetition in the clips they show and graphics. many of the quickly flashing images have little connection to the man or his work and information about his life and art is sparse to say the least both in visually and in the interviews. If anyone has a giant catalog of visuals to draw from it's David Bowie, there should be no need for showing things over and over again no matter how pretty they are. 

I would say fans would be thrilled the effort was made but they won't learn anything much new about their idol. The film doesn't even mentioned he died. If you weren't familiar with him, you would be missing a lot of useful info that might help you decode his public personality and private life. There are endless shots of the back of his head with him walking places. I honestly think the film would be at least cut in ½ is they and the repeated graphics were removed and the information you learn about him would still seem sparse. 

For me, I have yet to see a decent accounting of his life and work.

Documentary: No Straight Lines (2023) directed by VIVIAN KLEIMAN

 

This documentary follows the start of comics made by openly gay artists to present day. I hadn't heard about it until I was told an old friend, Jennifer Camper, was in it. I also worked in a comic book store fin the 80s so I was familiar with the other artists the history they were telling. 

Kleiman does a good job with her interviews and where they go. She lets them slip away from being a strict history of gay comics to , smartly, keeping a lot of conversation about what else was going on at the time to put it all in context. There are a lot of women artists involved as well which was a pleasant surprise as I knew of more lesbian arts than gay ones in the field a the time and it was nice to see them represented  in force. I had to take a break about ⅔ through and was surprised there was no mention of Eric Orner (another old friend), his Ethan Green comic nor his graphic novel about politician Barney Frank. Seemed really good fit but who knows what got in the way. As a filmmaker myself, I realize you can't talk to everyone and some people just won't talk to you in the time you need them too. Near the very end, however,  I saw a piece of artwork that showed his characters (including Boston's the Hat Sisters) so he was represented just not highlighted. 

This is a good modern look back at the early innovators that brought gay subject matter into the comic book world.

Woman in Motion (2022) directed by Todd Thompson

 

 This documentary about the work actress Nichelle Nicols did after her role as Uhura on the original Star Trek series ended is inspiring. While it does have interviews with other Trek cast members. it mostly deals with her impact on helping NASA diversify racially and in regards to gender. The doc has enough Star Trek references for fans but the discussions with astronauts and NASA officials is what drew me in. We don't need any more reasons to adore Nicols but this actress, dancer, singer and activist never stopped giving us more - right up until her recent death. 

Prehistoric Planet (2022) Apple TV series

One o the many projects that David Attenborough is known for is the BBC "Blue Planet" series that stunned the public with amazing nature photography and visuals and had interesting but not too much actual information. It relied heavily on the never higher quality of the video over everything else and it worked. Keeping the fact dumps to a minimum and just letting the public see and experience nature brought the wonder and curiosty of the world around us to the masses. The same can be said about this doc-series. It looks like Blue Planet, it sounds like Blue Planet (thanks to Attenborough's narration) and this a very good thing.

To be sure there is some pretty out their speculation about the behaviour and physical characteristics of long extinct animals in this and it can throw you a little from tie to time. None of that is just pulled out of nowhere, there are legit reasons to think some sauropods might have had weird inflatable bubbles along their necks, but maybe not enough reasons to include it here except for the chance to show it visually. Showing it visually is the point of this series and it does that by combining fantastic real world high def video with some of the best computer generated dinosaurs ever on the screen. The 5 chapters are broken up into environments, like forests, fresh water... etc. none of which has much of link to the action on the screen. It is an interesting way to break up the episodes even if it just doesn't mean much in the end. 

It would be natural and almost obligatory to compare this to the previous king of dino-docs, "Walking with Dinosaurs" , which has been the high bar for showing long perished animals on our TV screens. I prefer the framing of "Walking with..." over this, but 22 years later the information in that show is out of date. I can't say it's aged poorly though. It still reads as real life because of the how they filmed each shot as if a real crew was there, including "mistakes" and bringing a natural look that sold the idea that these were actual living breathing creatures. "Prehistoric Planet" is similar but almost too perfect, much as "Blue Planet" was in that the clarity and colours. This is not a criticism, just a difference in style I would say. This new doc does a great job with the dinosaur designs and updating them with the current  and likely much more accurate ideas of how these animals moved and looked. The raptors and flying reptiles are outstanding and look as present as anything you might see filmed in a "real world" production. 

5 episodes on Aple TV +

Science Friction (Documentary) 2022 directed by Emery Emery

 

Brian Dunning's company, Skeptoid media has produced a couple documentaries and educational films to promote skepticism and critical thinking over the years. This one is a little different in that, while promoting sketpiism, it does so by interviewing scientists and experts whose words have been manipulated and their expertise exploited for the ever expanding market of dubious documentaries that look more to entertain and make money over actually disseminating real information. 

Emery Emery has set up this doc to look in some ways like the shows and films being exposed without sinking to their level, and in doing so I think proves that you can have real information along with an entertaining product. The basic premise is simple and impossible to ignore after hearing some of the interviews.... TV shows will change what anyone says as long as it promotes whatever controversy, film tie in or ideological idea that have decided on ahed of time. The victims, scientists and experts and those mislabelled as such, are sometimes aware that this is likely to happen but take the chance that some of the truth will get out there as well. Many if not most of those ghost, alien, cryptic shows are not there to inform anyone. They are there to get enough viewers to sell ads and the people who make them don't have the slightest idea what reputation and accuracy can mean to an expert in any given field. I think they those familiar with the larger skeptical movement will be surprised at how many leaders in that realm have tried but fallen short of getting their message out there no matter how careful they are to avoid the well known traps set for them. There is a real struggle with them to take the chance or just avoid interviews altogether.

The movie does not wallow in self pity or anger or even deal with some of the weird claims directly It rightly stays on  track and shows how words were twisted and edited to mean the complete opposite of was said and it exposes a few well know "documentaries" that are nothing but propaganda pieces that use dishonesty and editing tricks to fool viewers. ("Vaxxed" and "Expelled" are examples). The pace is quick and the lightness helps keep the outrage down while at the same time revealing what a big problem entertainment and ideological goals are when they overtake the need for facts and truth. 

Free on Tubi so there is no excuse to miss it! 

Festival showing: The Picnic at the Symbiotic Film Festival

 

Bad timing for my film but a horrible tragedy in Ukraine and the rest of the world. The showing is tonight and still happening as far as I know. 

Vampira and Me (2012) directed by Ray Greene

The character created by Miala Nurmi in the 1950s did not bring her riches in the end but it did give the world an iconic creature that was often copied or referenced by many others right up until present day. Though she borrowed her look from the comic version of Mortician Addams, she took that look and gave it a voice, including a blood curdling scream.

The documentary does a great job taking the character away and replacing it with the real person behind it. The fact that Greene was personal friends with her for years gave him the chance to get deeper than anyone else could have ever been and his interview with her is amazing and we get a rare look into the real life of what we have only known as a camp icon. She was an amazing woman and actress that should have had a long, varied career but ended in abject poverty instead. We learn of her friendship with James Dean and how she ended up in Ed Wood’s trash classics Plan 9 From Outer Space. If you never heard of her before, this film will still hold your interest and leave you with nothing but respect for her. 

There are a few quibbles that I have with the doc, but they are really minor. It starts or with some lower end graphics that I think take away from the rest but they are dipped quickly and Greene does am admirable job making the most of a subject with only minutes of damaged footage and some publicity shots surviving. 

While her life ended on a mostly happy note, the movies touched briefly on her attempt to sue the people behind the “Elvira mistress of the dark” character which she had some influence in creating but ultimately lost, even though, much as I love Cassandra Peterson, Nurmi had every right to profit from what was truly an updating of her ground break work in the 50s. 

Documentary: Parc de L'espoir (2021) Directed by Vincent-louis Apruzzese

I added new material to the end of my 2014 documentary abut the AIDS memorial park here in Montréal. The park has been completely renovated and it 4 times it's previous size as well as much cleaner looking and inviting. I also added English and french subtitles to make the doc more accessible. 

Who Are You,Charlie brown? (2021) directed by Michael Bonifiglio

 Narrated by Lupita Nyongo, this hour long documentary for Apple TV+ is very well produced and does a good job telling the basics of Peanuts cartoon creator Charles Schultz. It has nicely done appropriate graphics setting the cartoon strip as a template to tell the story and includes a Charlie Brown animated story throughout in which he is asked to do an essay about himself. 

I can't say it's bad doc because it really isn't. but it lacks depth mostly because I think it is aimed a very young audiences as an introduction to Shultz's life which was pretty interesting. To my ears, Nyongo's narration is in that tone we reserve for young children, and the details of the artist's life are spoon fed through very simple factual statements. If it is aimed directly for younger children, then it's a good effort. If it was aimed at adults or fans of Peanuts then it's a little too simple and shallow a dive. maybe I knew too much about him already to be a target audience. 

Visible: Out on Television (2020) directed by Ryan White

 On Apple TV +

Spread over 5 episodes, this documentary details the presence and presentation of LBGT+ people from the beginning of TV to present. It is filled with interviews not just of actors, writers and producers but has some interesting political figure thrown in as well. The result is entertaining and informative and if you know someone who doesn't understand why representation in media is important for minority groups, particularly maligned groups, this might actually bring them around. 

The stories are deeply personal and the series skips over superficial career details and heads right for the meat of the theme of each episode bringing to light the story of LGBT+ people as they were seen in peoples living rooms across the decades, ties them to other groups and doesn't sugar coat the steps backwards it takes before you can go forward again in media representation. It ties political and news of the day with how gay people were forcing themselves in front of cameras to save their own lives at times.

There is some overlap between the segments but it doesn't get repetitive so that even someone like me, who lived through 90% of the time covered, can learn or be reminded of things forgotten in the still uphill battle for sexual minorities to be seen as real people. 

American Swinger (2008) directed by Jon Har & Matthew Kaufman

 In the 1970s Larry Levenson decided to open a straight sex club in New York at the Continental Baths with had been a gay bathhouse that had hired the likes of Bette Midler and Barry Manilow at one point. Soon the place was called "Plato's Retreat" and it became infamous. 

The film is, rightly, mostly about Levenson and his obsession with being some sort of king of the sexual revolution. Have taking over the gay club he immediately forbid sex amount the male guests (women on women was perfectly fine, of course) as well as alcohol, drugs and prostitution. These restrictions proved hard to enforce and honestly they didn't seem to make make of an effort making the place a haven for drug use and prostitutes. His plan was to open Plato's Retreat all over the United States, which never happened and the original club was eventually plagued by tax fraud and the changing policy landscape which included the rise of AIDS in the 1980s. 

The documentary is well done, I learned a lot about this famous club. It also has a few clips from Levenson and his then wife being interviewed by Phil Donahue which did nothing if not reinforce what a shitty, mean spirited and exploitative show he had. The directors show the many ides of the sexual revolution but despite all the talk of freedom and acceptance of non tradition (heterosexual) lifestyles - I have to say it comes across pretty clearly that the high minded "sexual liberation" was certainly a thing for many of the club goers but there was an overarching feeling that this place was more than a little sleepy and exploitive as well. 

I found it interesting to see how AIDS affected the straight sex scene in the 80s as most times AIDS is mentioned, if not every time it's only about the gay community's experience with it. The people interviewed show how far their heads were in the sand about the danger and how easy it was for straight people to buy into that a disease could only effect gay people and not them. One woman highlights this and states she realized she was only still alive by sheer luck and not all her friends from the time were not so lucky. 

This is an interesting view of the sexual revolution that lets you decide what to think of the players in the Plato's Retreat saga.

RKO Production 601: The Making of 'Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World' (2005)

Made in 2005 as a companion documentary for the 2005 re-release fo the original film, this film covers just about anything you might want to know about the making of the classic film from conception, to filming to reception as well as it's importance in the world of cinema. The interviews are top notch people and full of interesting information. I did get a little annoyed at the repetition of the idea that Kong was the first giant monster movie... it's not. Willis O'Brien the effects creator of the film had already done a monster on the loose in his version of "The Lost World" but Kong was definitely the first time we felt for the beast crushing the city he is stuck in. He moved the needle of effects works to a new level that still stands up today and showed that a completely artificially create character could be on par, or even outdo its real life human actors. A worthy documentary of the one of the world's best loved films. See the entire thing in the YouTube link above. 

I Am Divine (2013) Directed by Jeffrey Schwartz

 

This is a sweet documentary covering the life of Glen Milstead, better known as the outrageous drag artist Divine who died tragically of a heart attack the day before starting a role on the immensely popular "Married with Children" TV. It was to have been a huge turning point to a career as a more serious character actor. 

Pretty much all of Divine's friends and family were tapped for interviews and while the documentary covers all the bases you would expect, it does come off as a little sanitized after reading director's John Water's biographies like "Shock Value". Well, as sanitized as any film about Divine could be. I really appreciated the look into Glen's family life and his relationship with his parents. I was surprised there seemed to be no mention of Cookie Mueller but the other "Dreamland Studios" pals were at least given a mention. 

What really comes across is the affection and respect every around Milstead had for him and what a talented performer he was whose life was cut short after years of working towards a shot at more publicly accessible roles. He would have done even greater things and this is a good history and homage to a legend. 

Circus of Books (2019) directed by Rachel Mason

Karen and Barry Mason were having trouble making ends meet when they decided to take a chance distributing  Hustler fro Larry Flint, a decision which led to them distributing even more x-rated magazines and that in turn led them to becoming owners of a gay porn bookstore, something the couple hid from friends and even their own children for years. To them is was a business decision and they ran the business well for decades until the internet and online free porn caught up with them and they had to close the business down. 

The director is the couple's own daughter and despite some pretty tough reluctance from her her mother i particular, she tells a very personal story of two people who get involved in a business they had no interest in but ended up being an inspirations to 1000s as they not only pushed to stay open during the reason years but dealt head on with the AIDS crisis and finally their own issues when they discover one of the children is gay. 

This is not a high budget film which I think helps keep it on subject and real. Mason keeps the story on her family while all the time showing the events and political world changing over the 3 decades of the store's existence. While her parents are great people, they are not perfect and are not presented as perfect which makes the whole thing very relatable. Brave to Netflix for bringing this to us, I wish it was around when some of my earlier documentaries were made. 

Hail Satan (2019) Directed by Penny Lane

When you hear the word Satanism, what do you think? Since the ridiculous "Satanic Panic" in the 1970s, the word has brought to mine child abuse, murder, demons from board games and  variety of other things that - to be clear - have NO basis in fact.  So promoting the Satanic Temple as positive force in the world seems like an uphill battle, to say the least. Penny lane's excellent documentary does just that, however.

Started more or less a joke, the temple has expanded by leaps and bounds, mostly due to their work in promoting religious freedom in the USA. In some sense they are the ultimate trolls, when a city or state decides it needs a 10 Commandments monument or giant cross on state property, something that is 100% illegal and against the constitution, the Satanic Temple steps in with a massive, beautifully done Baphomet statues to go beside the Christian symbols. It is an effective way to get the point across that one religion should not be promoted over all others.

The spokesperson for the Temple is Lucien Graves and while he looks the part, talks the talk and walks the walk, you get a clear impression he does not like the role or the attention on him personally.   "Are you excited about the protest today?"the interviewer will ask. "No" is the one word response from Graves. He does, nevertheless make an effective spokesperson for the movement and handles hostile interviewers with a reasonable calm I am not sure many other people could.

Well paced and not one sided, in the sense that is covers schisms in the Satanist movement and goes over it's often spotty history, the film give the viewer a solid sense of what the actual beliefs of Satanism are and what they are trying to achieve in a country the reads of christian religious privilege. Satanists are not perfect as a religion by any means but their rules to live by are more than reasonable, fair and based in the real world. If you read them without knowing they were the rules of the Satanic Temple, you might think all religions should adopt them immediately.

Satanist as promoters of justice and equality might seem like a strange idea after decades of misinformation, but you will likely be convinced by the end of the 95 minute run time. You may not want to run out and join your local Satanist Temple chapter, but you will more likely than not agree with most of things that are trying to accomplish.

The legend of Leigh Bowery 2002 directed by Charles Atlas

Leigh Bowery was one of those 80s club and fashion legends whose name seems to have been, like too many others, lost because of time and the avalanche of death caused by the AIDS crisis. This movie goes a long way to remedy that and give the current generation a better idea of the world that allowed people like him to flourish, a world that is lost forever it seems.

The 80s were crazy in ways the 60s and 70s were not, they were self-aware and in your face - all things Bowery exemplified. He was outrageous, but his work was his art and he was a true artist. I would put him in the same drawer as Klaus Nomi as they were both outcasts with immense talent that were able to steer their eccentricities into a sort of fame. It's impossible to believe that if they came around today that they would succeed at all in their world of easy offence, nuance and context. Watching this documentary brought back memories of how subjects like Nazism, black face, gay sex and fashion were sometimes combined as a form a parody and the back lash was minimal because we at the time knew the context and intent of what was being presented, but not promoted.

He made the way for some current drag performers and fashionistas but was able to go much farther than they could dream of going.

Thanks to Michael Z. Keamy for finding this complete documentary online.

Lo and Behold 2016 directed by Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog is a truly great, f not unique film director and his documentary work stands out for its presentation and subject matter. Into the Abyss and From One Second to the Next are two more recent of his documentaries that show how powerful that medium can be. Lo and Behold, sadly is not in that league or even close to it. It rambles, but goes nowhere and it shows, to me at least that Herzog has little to know understanding of the subject matter.

That is not to say it doesn't have it's moments. It does. I particularly liked the interview with Lawrence Krauss who comes across as reasonable person while some of the other experts, like the guy giving the tour of the birthplace of the Internet come across as total crackpots. Elon Musk makes his points well and a couple others refute some of his ideas in ways that I think show there is more than one way to think about the subjects discussed.

My biggest problems are two parts I find offensive or irresponsible, respectively.  The first is the interview with the family who lost a daughter in an accident and then started getting emails of her decapitated body in emails with truly horrible statements about her. That situation is bad enough but Herzog lets the interview include a clip of the mother going all "the Internet is real the Antichrist" and it makes her look foolish and not like the grieving parent she is. I also don't see how they can blame the Internet for what happened... it didn't cause the crash and even the emails are not something new... people would sent horrifying photos and letters to people in the mail before it could be electronically. People have always been inhumane to each others in ways that are hard to understand. I find her being used in a way that is unfeeling and unnecessary.  The second is the group who live in an area where the placement of radio telescopes forbids electronic devices, and all wifi signals. Some are there for work but he concentrates on a few that talks about their sensitivity to wifi... it's not a real thing. Humans have no ways to sense that sort of low level radiation and they HAVE been tested to see if there is an affect they can somehow sense something somehow and they never have, not even once. I think it's pretty obvious these people are suffering but giving them a made up answer just prevents them from finding a real one. That is harmful to them and it continues one of the most basic misconceptions about how these things work and encourages being willfully ignorant of real world physics.

So with a heavy heart, I have to put this Herzog film as one of his few disappointments for me.

Sons of Star trek

For the Love of Spock (2016) directed by Adam Nimoy
Trek Nation (2011) ditected by Scott Colthorp

Eugene "Rod" Rodenberry and Adam Nimoy were the sons of gene Rodenberry and, the creator of Star Trek and Lenord Nimoy who played the iconic alien Mr. Spock in the franchise. Both got through not only the history and accomplishments of famous fathers but also the cost thier familys paid by having such well known and publically well loved figures as dads.

I can reccoemnd both documentaries highly. I will say, for the Love of Spock has better production values overall, which is not a surprise as Adam Nimoy is a film director. Trek Nation is not badly made either and tackles a much thornier subjects such as his dad's womanizing over the years with a very open interview with Majel Barrett, Gene Rodenberry's wife and Star Trek icon in her own right.

Oddly two films with strong connections to the history of Star Trek, a show that has been written about, discussed, parodied to infinity at this point, should be expected to have lots of repetative information and spill over from countless other projects about the subject, but they both are fresh takes on a juggernaugt franchise that only the sons of men who many consider to be giants can give us.